Chapter 11 - THE DEAL MY MOTHER MADE TO SAVE ME
Laura had not betrayed me.
I knew that before we found proof.
Some truths lived deeper than evidence.
The envelope contained money.
Not from Laura.
To Laura.
Antonio paid her two hundred thousand dollars.
She deposited none of it.
Instead, two days later, the exact amount appeared in accounts belonging to families of men Elena had listed as victims of Vittorio Moretti.
“She took his money and gave it away,” I whispered.
Dante almost smiled.
“I like your mother.”
“So do I.”
Then we found the deal.
Laura had told Antonio she knew where Elena’s final file was hidden.
In exchange for leaving Olivia alone, she would retrieve it.
She lied.
There was no file in her possession.
She was buying time.
Antonio discovered the deception.
Then her house burned.
I sat in Dante’s library crying until I had no tears left.
Orion lay with his head in my lap.
Dante stayed across the room.
Not touching.
Not fixing.
Eventually, I said:
“You can sit closer.”
He did.
“Closer than that.”
He moved beside me.
I leaned against his shoulder.
His entire body went still.
“You’re terrible at this,” I whispered.
“At what?”
“Comfort.”
“I usually solve problems differently.”
“I’ve heard.”
He looked down at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Everything your family suffered because of mine.”
“You weren’t even born when some of it started.”
“I inherited enough.”
I lifted my head.
“You’re trying to dismantle it.”
“Yes.”
“That counts.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
Silence stretched.
Dangerous silence.
Then Dante touched my cheek.
Carefully.
As though I were something he could frighten away.
“I’ve been thinking about you since the restaurant.”
“Because Orion liked me?”
“At first.”
“And now?”
His gray eyes held mine.
“Now the dog is becoming inconvenient.”
I laughed.
Then kissed him.
Or maybe he kissed me.
It did not matter.
It was slow.
Unexpectedly gentle.
When we separated, Orion shoved his head between us.
I laughed against Dante’s mouth.
“He’s jealous.”
“He has poor boundaries.”
“You own a Mafia dog.”
“He is not a Mafia dog.”
Two armed guards passed outside the library.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Fine.”
Dante smiled.
A real smile.
Then Marco called from federal custody.
He had remembered something.
Antonio kept one secure archive no one else could access.
A private vault beneath an old theater in Brooklyn.
Dante knew it.
His mother used to take him there as a child.
We searched it with investigators.
Inside were decades of files.
One bore my name.
OLIVIA ROSSI/MARSHALL.
Inside was a legal document.
Adoption records.
Photographs.
And a trust.
Elena had inherited money from her own family.
She placed it entirely in my name before disappearing.
Current value:
Forty-three million dollars.
I stared.
“I don’t want it.”
Dante looked almost amused.
“It is yours.”
“I have four hundred dollars in checking.”
“Then this is statistically significant.”
I laughed despite myself.
But the final document killed the humor.
The trust had a co-beneficiary.
Isabella Rossi.
Rachel.
Except beside her name was stamped:
DECEASED — AGE 8.
I looked at my sister.
Rachel’s face drained.
May you like
Legally, Isabella Rossi had died twenty-five years ago.
Which meant the woman beside me had been living under a dead child’s identity for reasons even she did not know.
